THE DOCTOR'S WORLD

THE DOCTOR'S WORLD; Revisionist History Sees Pasteur As Liar Who Stole Rival's Ideas

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D.

Published: May 16, 1995

Louis Pasteur, one of the legendary figures in the history of science, lied about his research, stole ideas from a competitor and was deceitful in ways that would now be regarded as scientific misconduct if not fraud, according to a revisionist history published this month. None of this would have come to light if not for a long scientific tradition: the laboratory notebook.

"The Private Science of Louis Pasteur," by Dr. Gerald L. Geison of Princeton University, is based on an examination of Pasteur's 102 laboratory notebooks, which have been well preserved for more than a century. The secretive and ruthless Pasteur ordered that his handwritten notebooks should be withheld from outsiders. But an heir left them to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, where they have been open to scholars since the mid-1970's.

Dr. Geison is one of the few historians of science to base research on laboratory notebooks. In Pasteur's case, the research turned up serious discrepancies between his publications and public statements and what he recorded in his notebooks. But this is not the only example of scientists and historians as well as investigative journalists beginning to shatter myths about crucial discoveries and those who made them. The disclosures are revealing that science is not as objective, neat and scrupulously honest as it is portrayed.

A scientific notebook is where a researcher is supposed to record the purpose of each experiment, the substances and procedures used, the findings and the interpretation of the results. It is one of the oldest traditions in science, one carried on in virtually every laboratory today, although, surprisingly, such notebooks are not required, even for recipients of Federal grants.

The thinking, creativity and circumstances that lead to discoveries are among the least understood aspects of research. Scientific publications tell only part of the story, and if laboratory notebooks were examined more often, it is likely that people would learn more about the process of discovery. In defusing fantasies about the pure and impeccable nature of research, this knowledge could help prevent the public from establishing unattainable standards for scientists and feeling betrayed when serious errors and misconduct are exposed.

Laboratory notebooks are crucial in cases where published reports cannot be verified, and they are relevant to debates about the honesty and integrity of contemporary scientists. Discrepancies between data in Thereza Imanishi-Kari's notebooks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and results she reported in a paper in the journal Cell in 1986 with Dr. David Baltimore, a Nobel Prize winner, played a key role in investigations that recommended she be barred from taking part in federally financed research for 10 years.

In 1881, after having helped to establish the germ theory of fermentation and disease, Pasteur turned to veterinary and human medicine. He tried to reduce the virulence of microbes by exposing them to oxygen in order to make them suitable for vaccination. But in developing a vaccine against anthrax, a bacterial infection that was economically important because it was a major killer of sheep, Pasteur adapted a method he had used a year earlier to produce a vaccine against chicken cholera. To head off competitors, Pasteur had purposely withheld reporting the simple method he used to prepare the chicken cholera vaccine.

Despite reservations about the readiness of his anthrax vaccine for use, Pasteur impulsively accepted a public challenge to carry out the world's first public trial of any experimental vaccine. Pasteur's assistants injected his formula into 25 sheep, left another 25 unprotected and then injected all 50 with virulent anthrax bacteria. He triumphed; only the vaccinated sheep survived.

But, the notebooks show, Pasteur lied when he suggested publicly that his dramatically successful vaccine had been developed by exposing anthrax bacteria to oxygen. In fact he never disclosed in print that apparently to avoid embarrassment, he made his vaccine by secretly relying on a technique used by a rival, Jean-Joseph Toussaint, a veterinarian, that involved a chemical, potassium bichromate.

Eventually, Pasteur's oxygen method did produce an anthrax vaccine, but only after he had won a monopoly to produce the vaccine.

Pasteur's final triumph was the development of a rabies vaccine. His first experiments on humans were preceded by attempts to cure symptomatic rabies in animals, as he said publicly.

His most famous experiment was on a young boy, Joseph Meister, who had been bitten by a rabid dog and was doomed to death, and whose mother pleaded with Pasteur to treat him. Pasteur reported that he had previously used his rabies vaccine on 50 dogs without a single failure.

Again, the laboratory notebooks show that this account was misleading. Pasteur had tested a vaccine on dogs, but it was prepared by a completely different method than the one he used for the vaccine given to Meister, and he had no conclusive animal results to show that the vaccine worked. But he had guessed right.